10 Great Rebus Novels (John Rebus) (29 page)

‘John.’ The voice was anodyne now. ‘You’ve had . . . experience. Personal experience. I’d like you to help me front our side of the campaign.’

‘No, sir, really –’

‘Good. That’s agreed then.’ Watson had already risen. Rebus tried to stand, too, but his legs had lost all power. He pushed against the armrests with his hands and managed to heave himself upright. Was this the price they were demanding? Public atonement for having a rotten brother? Watson was opening the door. ‘We’ll talk again, go through the details. But for now, try to tie up whatever you’re working on, casenotes up to date, that sort of thing. Tell me what you can’t finish, and we’ll find someone to take it off your hands.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Rebus clutched at the proffered hand. It was like steel, cool, dry and crushing.

‘Goodbye, sir,’ Rebus said, standing in the corridor now, to a door that had already closed on him.

That evening, still numb, he grew bored with television and left his flat, planning to drive around a bit, no real destination in mind. Marchmont was quiet, but then it always was. His car sat undisturbed on the cobbles outside his tenement. He started it up and drove, entering the centre of town, crossing to the New Town. At Canonmills he stopped in the forecourt of a petrol station and filled the
car, adding a torch, some batteries, and several bars of chocolate to his purchases, paying by credit card.

He ate the chocolate as he drove, trying not to think of the next day’s cigarette ration, and listened to the car radio. Gill Templer’s lover, Calum McCallum, began his broadcast at eight thirty, and he listened for a few minutes. It was enough. The mock-cheery voice, the jokes so lame they needed wheelchairs, the predictable mix of old records and telephone-linked chatter. . . . Rebus turned the tuning knob until he found Radio Three. Recognising the music of Mozart, he turned up the volume.

He had always known that it would end here of course. He drove through the ill-lit and winding streets, threading his way further into the maze. A new padlock had been fitted to the door of the house, but Rebus had in his pocket a copy of the key. Switching on his torch, he walked quietly into the living room. The floor was bare. There was no sign that a corpse had lain there only ten hours before. The jar of syringes had gone, too, as had the candlesticks. Ignoring the far wall, Rebus left the room and headed upstairs. He pushed open the door of Ronnie’s bedroom and walked in, crossing to the window. This was where Tracy said she had found the body. Rebus squatted, resting on his toes, and shone the torch carefully over the floor. No sign of a camera. Nothing. It wasn’t going to be made easy for him, this case. Always supposing there
was
a case.

He only had Tracy’s word for it, after all.

He retraced his steps, out of the room and towards the stairwell. Something glinted against the top step, right in at the corner of the stairs. Rebus picked it up and examined it. It was a small piece of metal, like the clasp from a cheap brooch. He pushed it into his pocket anyway and took another look at the staircase, trying to imagine
Ronnie regaining consciousness and making his way to the ground floor.

Possible. Just possible. But to end up positioned like that . . .? Much less feasible.

And why bring the jar of syringes downstairs with him? Rebus nodded to himself, sure that he was wandering the maze in something like the right direction. He went downstairs again and into the living room. It had a smell like the mould on an old jar of jam, earthy and sweet at the same time. The earth sterile, the sweetness sickly. He went over to the far wall and shone his torchlight against it.

Then came up short, blood pounding. The circles were still there, and the five-pointed star within them. But there were fresh additions, zodiac signs and other symbols between the two circles, painted in red. He touched the paint. It was tacky. Bringing his fingers away, he shone the torch further up the wall, and read the dripping message:

HELLO RONNIE

Superstitious to his core, Rebus turned on his heels and fled, not bothering to relock the door behind him. Walking briskly towards his car, his eyes turned back in the direction of the house, he fell into someone, and stumbled. The other figure fell awkwardly, and was slow to rise. Rebus switched on his torch, and confronted a teenager, eyes sparkling, face bruised and cut.

‘Jesus, son,’ he whispered, ‘what happened to you?’

‘I got beat up,’ the boy said, shuffling away on a painful leg.

Rebus made the car somehow, his nerves as thin as old shoelaces. Inside, he locked the door and sat back, closing his eyes, breathing hard. Relax, John, he told himself. Relax. Soon, he was even able to smile at his momentary lapse of courage. Tomorrow he’d come back. In daylight.

He’d seen enough for now.

Sleep did not come easy, but eventually, slumped in his favourite chair, a book propped open on his lap, he must have dozed off, because it took a nine o’clock call to bring him to life.

His back, legs and arms were stiff and aching as he scrabbled on the floor for his new cordless telephone.

‘Yes?’

‘Lab here, Inspector Rebus. You wanted to know first thing.’

‘What have you got?’ Rebus slumped back into the warm chair, pulling at his eyes with his free hand, trying to engage their cooperation in this fresh and waking world. He glanced at his watch and realised just how late he’d slept.

‘Well, it’s not the purest heroin on the street.’

He nodded to himself, confident that his next question hardly needed asking. ‘Would it kill whoever injected it?’

The reply jolted him upright.

‘Not at all. In fact, it’s very clean, all things considered. A bit watered down from its pure form, but that’s not uncommon. In fact, it’s mandatory.’

‘But it would be okay to use?’

‘I imagine it would be very good to use.’

‘I see. Well, thank you.’ Rebus pressed the disconnect button. He had been so sure. So sure. . . . He reached into his pocket, found the number he needed, and pushed the seven digits quickly, before the thought of
morning coffee could overwhelm him.

‘Inspector Rebus for Doctor Enfield.’ He waited. ‘Doctor? Fine thanks. How about you? Good, good. Listen, that body yesterday, the druggie on the Pilmuir Estate, any news?’ He listened. ‘Yes, I’ll hold.’

Pilmuir. What had Tony McCall said? It had been lovely once, a place of innocence, something like that. The old days always were though, weren’t they? Memory smoothed the corners, as Rebus himself knew well.

‘Hello?’ he said to the telephone. ‘Yes, that’s right.’ Paper was rustling in the background, Enfield’s voice dispassionate.

‘Bruising on the body. Fairly extensive. Result of a heavy fall or some kind of physical confrontation. The stomach was almost completely empty. HIV negative, which is something. As for the cause of death, well. . . .’

‘The heroin?’ Rebus prompted.

‘Mmm. Ninety-five percent impure.’

‘Really?’ Rebus perked up. ‘What had it been diluted with?’

‘Still working on that, Inspector. But an educated guess would be anything from ground-up aspirin to rat poison, with the emphasis strictly on rodent control.’

‘You’re saying it was lethal?’

‘Oh, absolutely. Whoever sold the stuff was selling euthanasia. If there’s more of it about . . . well, I dread to think.’

More of it about?
The thought made Rebus’s scalp tingle. What if someone were going around poisoning junkies? But why the one perfect packet? One perfect, one as rotten as could be. It didn’t make sense.

‘Thanks, Doctor Enfield.’

He rested the telephone on the arm of the chair. Tracy had been right in one respect at least. They
had
murdered Ronnie. Whoever ‘they’ were. And Ronnie had known, known as soon as he’d used the stuff. . . . No, wait. . . .
Known
before
he’d used the stuff? Could that be possible? Rebus had to find the dealer. Had to find out why Ronnie had been chosen to die. Been, indeed, sacrificed. . . .

It was Tony McCall’s backyard. All right, so he had moved out of Pilmuir, had eventually bought a crippling mortgage which some people called a house. It was a nice house, too. He knew this because his wife told him it was. Told him continually. She couldn’t understand why he spent so little time there. After all, as she told him, it was his home too.

Home. To McCall’s wife, it was a palace. ‘Home’ didn’t quite cover it. And the two children, son and daughter, had been brought up to tiptoe through the interior, not leaving crumbs or fingerprints, no mess, no breakages. McCall, who had lived a bruising childhood with his brother Tommy, thought it unnatural. His children had grown up in fear and in a swaddling of love – a bad combination. Now Craig was fourteen, Isabel eleven. Both were shy, introspective, maybe even a bit strange. Bang had gone McCall’s dream of a professional footballer for a son, an actress for a daughter. Craig played chess a lot, but no physical sports. (He had won a small plaque at school after one tournament. McCall had tried to learn to play after that, but had failed.) Isabel liked knitting. They sat in the too-perfect living room created by their mother, and were almost silent. The clack-clack of needles; the soft movement of chess pieces.

Christ, was it any wonder he kept away?

So here he was in Pilmuir, not checking on anything exactly, just walking. Taking some air. From his own ultra-modern estate, all detached shoeboxes and Volvos, he had to cross some waste ground, avoid the traffic on a busy arterial road, pass a school playing-field and manoeuvre between some factory units to find himself in
Pilmuir. But it was worth the effort. He knew this place; knew the minds that festered here.

He was one of them, after all.

‘Hello, Tony.’

He swirled, not recognising the voice, expecting hassle. John Rebus stood there, smiling at him, hands in pockets.

‘John! Christ, you made me jump.’

‘Sorry. Stroke of luck bumping into you though.’ Rebus checked around them, as though looking for someone. ‘I tried phoning, but they said it was your day off.’

‘Aye, that’s right.’

‘So what are you doing here?’

‘Just walking. We live over that way.’ He jerked his head towards the south-west. ‘It’s not far. Besides, this is my patch, don’t forget. Got to keep an eye on the boys and girls.’

‘That’s why I wanted to speak to you actually.’

‘Oh?’

Rebus had begun to walk along the pavement, and McCall, still rattled by his sudden appearance, followed.

‘Yes,’ Rebus was saying. ‘I wanted to ask if you know someone, a friend of the deceased’s. The name is Charlie.’

‘That’s all? Charlie?’ Rebus shrugged. ‘What does he look like?’

Rebus shrugged again. ‘I’ve no idea, Tony. It was Ronnie’s girlfriend Tracy who told me about him.’

‘Ronnie? Tracy?’ McCall’s eyebrows met. ‘Who the hell are they?’

‘Ronnie is the deceased. That junkie we found on the estate.’

Everything was suddenly clear in McCall’s mind. He nodded slowly. ‘You work quickly,’ he said.

‘The quicker the better. Ronnie’s girlfriend told me an interesting story.’

‘Oh?’

‘She said Ronnie was murdered.’ Rebus kept on walking, but McCall had stopped.

‘Wait a minute!’ He caught Rebus up. ‘Murdered? Come on, John, you saw the guy.’

‘True. With a needle’s worth of rat poison scuppering his veins.’

McCall whistled softly. ‘Jesus.’

‘Quite,’ said Rebus. ‘And now I need to talk to Charlie. He’s young, could be a bit scared, and interested in the occult.’

McCall sorted through a few mental files. ‘I suppose there are one or two places we could try looking,’ he said at last. ‘But it’d be a slog. The concept of neighbourhood policing hasn’t quite stretched this far yet.’

‘You’re saying we won’t be made very welcome?’

‘Something like that.’

‘Well, just give me the addresses and point me in the right direction. It’s your day off after all.’

McCall looked slighted. ‘You’re forgetting, John. This is my patch. By rights, this should be my case, if there is a case.’

‘It would’ve been your case if you hadn’t had that hangover.’ They smiled at this, but Rebus was wondering whether, in Tony McCall’s hands, there
would
have been anything to investigate. Wouldn’t Tony just have let it slip? Should he, Rebus, let it slip, too?

‘Anyway,’ McCall was saying on cue, ‘surely you must have better things to do?’

Rebus shook his head. ‘Nothing. All my work’s been farmed out, with the emphasis on “farmed”.’

‘You mean Superintendent Watson?’

‘He wants me working on his anti-drugs campaign. Me, for Christ’s sake.’

‘That could be a bit embarrassing.’

‘I know. But the idiot thinks I’ve got “personal experience”.’

‘He’s got a point, I suppose.’ Rebus was about to argue, but McCall got in first. ‘So you’ve nothing to do?’

‘Not until summoned by Farmer Watson, no.’

‘You jammy bugger. Well, that does change things a bit, but not enough, I’m sorry to say. You’re my guest here, and you’re going to have to put up with me. Until I get bored, that is.’

Rebus smiled. ‘I appreciate it, Tony.’ He looked around them. ‘So, where to first?’

McCall inclined his head back the way they had just come. They turned around and walked.

‘So tell me,’ said Rebus, ‘what’s so awful at home that you’d think of coming here on your day off?’

McCall laughed. ‘Is it so obvious then?’

‘Only to someone who’s been there himself.’

‘Ach, I don’t know, John. I seem to have everything I’ve never wanted.’

‘And it’s still not enough.’ It was a simple statement of belief.

‘I mean, Sheila’s a wonderful mother and all that, and the kids never get into trouble, but. . . .’

‘The grass is always greener,’ said Rebus, thinking of his own failed marriage, of the way his flat was cold when he came home, the way the door would close with a hollow sound behind him.